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One Billion Smartphones By 2015 - WP To Take Second Place

When Apple debut the iPhone in 2007, there was already 1 billion phones sold worldwide. However, that include regular phones that just made calls. Since then, smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberries, and those based on Android have grown to become a large share of the global phone market. According to IDC, there we will see 1 billion smartphones ship by 2015.

What's interesting is that I was going to extrapolate the numbers based on today's marketshare. However, IDC had their own ideas. Windows Phone 7 will come out of nowhere and take second pace from Apple while Android remains at the top.

With one billion smartphones in 2015, 440 million of them will be Android, 200 million will be WP devices, 170 million iOS phones, and 130 million Blackberries. Essentially, IDC has WP growing from about 2 to 3 million shipped so far to 200 million in 48 months. Or a 100x growth.

Obviously, I am not one to put it past Microsoft to suddenly have a spurt of inspiration and innovative energy that can make this happen. Still, this is one statistic I'm going to keep in in the back of my head for reference in 2015.

Pulling back a bit, one billion is a crazy number and even by 2015, I'm sure the market will still have lots of room to growth on a planet with 7 billion-ish people. And can you imagine the awesome mobile devices that we'll see in just 48 months?